Tuesday, April 10, 2007

down with talking animals!!!

Somebody posted a poll on MDC about whether kids' TV shows should show eating meat, because some people find it offensive. The issue was brought up when the pollster noticed a rabbit eating ham on one of her kid's shows.

Fortunately, few people are in favour of banning meat eating on TV. Here's what I wrote:

I WANT my children to see meat eating on TV. What bothers me more is anthropomorphized animals. IMO, I think children are SO bombarded with media animals that act human that they do not know how to think about animals as animals. This can lead to some trauma when they start to realize where food comes from (for non-vegetarians), and you end up with adults who, if they eat meat at all, don't want to think about where it comes from - they prefer their meat on a styrofoam board covered in plastic wrap. It's this disconnect between the REALITY of animals and meat consumption that facilitates the hold of big agribusiness on our food production systems and the pervasive and largely unnoticed cruelty to animals in confinement operations. People just don't want to THINK about where their meat comes from because they would rather think of animals as cute little talking things that wear clothes and eat ham (which comes from the grocery store, not a pig of course.) If they don't think about where food comes from, they can't get angry about it, and if they can't get angry about it, nobody will do anything.

I'm going to start a campaign for REAL animals I think. Like the campaign for real ale or the campaign for real milk. REAL bunnies don't eat ham. Down with anthropomorphism!!!